Here below are some of my favorite articles and cookbooks for healthier living. Bottom line: Shop the periphery of the supermarket. All the natural foods are there. The center of the market is full of the processed foods that are stripped of some nutrients and loaded with garbage that increases profits for stores and manufacturers while burdening you with extra fat, sugar, salt, calories, and weight. Also: Don't rely on supplements -- try getting your vitamins through whole foods.
" You are what what you eat eats." ~Michael Pollan, who also advised: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
• Green onions: The unheralded, phytonutrient-rich super food Lynne Rossetto Kasper (Splendid Table) interviews Jo Robinson, author of Eating on the Wild Side, about how to select foods that are full of healthy phytonutrients -- and how to preserve those nutrients while cooking. Her premise: Over thousands of years of agriculture, many of the phytonutrients have been bred out of the plants we buy at the supermarket. Some apples are more nutritious than others, and green onions are far healthier than the other kinds--IF you eat the GREEN part!

• Diverse Gut Microbes, A Trim Waistline And Health Go Together (Rob Stein, All Things Considered, NPR, 8-28-13) Listen or read. The proper diet is the key to getting healthier. "The researchers also identified eight species of bacteria that appeared to be missing among the people whose microbes were depleted, raising the possibility of someday creating a probiotic that could help."

• Beans, Greens, and the Best Foods for the Brain (Bret S. Stetka, MD, Medscape, 7-7-15) Oysters are good for the brain (and packed with B12)! "[O]nly in the past 100 years has our diet drastically switched from a whole foods diet to one that is more processed and high in refined carbohydrates; that includes more vegetable fats rather than meat fats; and preservatives, emulsifiers, and other additives, which appear to have contributed to a decline in our collective health." And on how we have destroyed the nutritional value of grains. Eat the rainbow -- "bold, bright colors in nature tend to signify valuable vitamins and phytonutrients (the reds, purples, and greens in particular" (but not gummi bears). Interesting for insights into food and depression and anxiety.

• Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss. See Joanna Blythman's review in The Observer 2-23-13. She writes: "Moss's central thesis is that junk food is a legalised type of narcotic. By deliberately manipulating three key ingredients – salt, sugar and fat – that act much like drugs, racing along the same pathways and neural circuitry to reach the brain's pleasure zones, the food and drink industry has created an elastic formula for a never-ending procession of lucrative products."

• The Autoimmune Solution: Prevent and Reverse the Full Spectrum of Inflammatory Symptoms and Diseases by Amy Myers. Here are some of my cousin L's favorite recipes from this cookbook:
An ongoing fav is page 256-b, the sweet apple breakfast sausage. We frequently eat those but add a peach in season in place of apple, and currently using organic Mango, frozen from Costco.
We like spaghetti squash on page 254 and page 235. I do cheat and cook spaghetti squash whole in microwave!
We were very diligent in cooking the roast chicken on page 247 and using the broth. Made a few changes as time went on with the spices. Currently we're using organic/pure broth from Costco.
Meatballs page 257
The cauliflower pilaf on page 220 and we enjoyed it with fish mixed in with it ... we were surprised! We had bbq-ed the fish with onions and spices first. Fish could be baked too.
A fav salad is Kale and Cranberry on page 231 ... actually we never found sugar-free cranberries and I substituted organic grapes -- options!

Also recommended (by a nutritionist):
• The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book (2nd edition) by Jessica K. Black. Subtitle: Protect Yourself and Your Family from Heart Disease, Arthritis, Diabetes, Allergies, —and More

• A Breakdown of Sweeteners (Melissa King, My Whole Food Life, 11-7-12). The sweeteners we like to use are organic raw honey, organic coconut sugar, and organic pure maple syrup. We chose these three because they are the least processed and they do contain small amounts of nutrients. Excellent descriptions of all the sweeteners, fake and real.

• The hunger mood (Michael Graziano, Aeon) His point: Hunger is psychological and dieting only makes it worse. Take in fewer calories and you’ll lose weight. But explicitly try to reduce calories, and you’ll do the exact opposite. Skip breakfast, cut calories at lunch, eat a small dinner, be constantly mindful of the calorie count, and you poke the hunger tiger

This is interesting: Expert Tips on How to Cook Without Oil (Darshana Thacker, Forks & Knives, 8-16-15) Steam, poach, boil, and stew your dishes. Here's a breakdown of how to sauté, stir-fry, bake, and roast without added fat.

- PM

March 25, 2016 1:50 PM EDT

• If the Greek diet is so healthy, why are so many Greeks overweight? (Elena Paravantes, Reveal, 10-29-12)."[T]oday, many Greeks are limiting themselves to two teaspoons of olive oil a day, using margarine in their cooking, eating plenty of meat and following an Atkins-style diet in an effort to lose weight. And it’s not working."
Find Greek recipes on Elena's blog Olive Tomato (Greek food, nutrition, and more)

- PM

April 8, 2016 4:53 PM EDT

A Breakdown of Sweeteners (Melissa King, My Whole Food Life, 11-7-12) She writes, "The sweeteners we like to use are organic raw honey, organic coconut sugar, and organic pure maple syrup." And then she tells us what is in good and bad in all the sweeteners you'll find on supermarket shelves.

"This is a special gem of a resource for those contending with dying,death, and bereavement. Through its expertly chosen material, Dying, A Book of Comfort informs, guides, and gently enables healthy grief and mourning. I recommend it heartily.

~ Therese A. Rando, author of How to Go On Living
When Someone You Love Dies

“The subject of death is so rife with terror that it takes a calm and sure hand like Pat McNees’s to soothe, help us understand, and finally, rejoice in life. This is an important and very dear book.”

~ Sherry Suib Cohen, author of Secrets of a Very Happy Marriage

“A remarkable collection (331 pages) of quotations of comfort.”

~ Ernest Morgan,Dealing Creatively with Death

“Seldom have I read a book that exudes such comfort, such an embrace of genuine insight, care and support....The book’s gift, and it is a rich treasure for the reader, is that it embraces who we are.... The book can be read cover to cover, or just pick out a page. Something will leap off the page, a story, a quote, a reading, narrative couplings of diverse themes colorfully worded by the author/​scribe, to give you the needed word or embrace....This book needs wide circulation. The bereaved deserve this, and the book will help all of us.”

“McNees has provided a remarkable anthology of insights, comforting words, stories, reassurance, and guidance for the journey of dying and grieving. Fourteen chapters delve artfully and compassionately into a full range of dying, death, and bereavement topics. An index by author ‘Names’ and another by ‘Titles and Selected First Lines’ make it possible to return and savor the many rich offerings she has gathered.”

~ Rev. Paul A. Metzler, The Center for Living with Loss, in newsletter, Association for Death Education and Counseling

"Dying, A Book of Comfort is THE book to press into the hands of those you love, read out loud in the company of others, and reflect on after they have all gone home. Pat McNees gently guides us as we reluctantly explore the far side of forever."